We Saw X-Men: Days of Future Past, and IT'S AWESOME!

If you’re as big of an X-Men fan as we are, then we have good news: X-Men: Days of Future Past is the movie we’ve all been waiting for. Although there a couple of legitimate comic book movie classics in the series already, X-Men: Days of Future Past manages to surpass them all, in the craziest entry in the series ever.

The movie brings Bryan Singer back to the helm, after Brett Ratner’s disappointing third X-Men film and Matthew Vaughn’s surprisingly awesome X-Men: First Class. We get to see the best of both casts come together in a time travel adventure that sees the X-Men send one of their own back to 1973 to prevent a terrible dystopian future where mutants are hunted and put in concentration camps by super powerful robots called Sentinels.

Those of you who know the source material may be surprised to find that it is actually Wolverine, not Kitty Pryde, who is sent back into 1973. The practical reason is that the time travel happens by actually moving the character’s consciousness back into his former self, and Kitty Pryde simply wasn’t alive yet in 1973 in the movie continuity. Luckily, Kitty is still given a big role in the story, as she uses her phasing powers to actually be the one that sends Wolverine back in time. Unlike Doctor Who where creating paradoxes is avoided at all cost, the whole point in the time travel in this movie is to change the past so prevent a potentially terrible future.

The basic trouble early on is Wolverine having to convince younger versions of both Professor Xavier and Magneto that they need to stop Mystique from assassinating a mutant-hating guy named Bolivar Trask, played awesomely by Peter Dinklage. Basically, Trask wants to invent the Sentinels to wipe out of the mutants, and by assassinating him, they would be making him into a martyr and causing the Sentinel project to definitely happen. If they stop Mystique from killing him, there’s a chance that they can convince everybody that maybe mutants aren’t so bad after all and you don’t have to massacre them all, thank you very much.

The cast of X-Men: Days of Future Past is HUGE. Basically all of the big players from the new and older X-Men movies are involved, although a few characters here and there were written out to keep things from getting out of hand. We are also introduced to a few newcomers, like Blink, Warpath, and Bishop, all of whom will be familiar to comic book lovers. Blink can create portals to transport people from one place to another at a whim, Warpath is a Native American warrior with super strength, speed, and reflexes, and Bishop is a tech expert who also happens to be able to absorb and redirect energy to awesome effect. The stand out mutant addition is definitely Quicksilver, who uses his super speed early on in some of the coolest scenes in the movie. The entire cast, including those who have been with the franchise from the beginning as well as the newcomers, definitely bring their A-games.

The action in X-Men: Days of Future Past gets started immediately and doesn’t let up for the entire run time. Practically every mutant gets involved in the action at some point, even if they don’t necessarily have much to do in the actual story. The fight scenes are as cool as anything we’ve seen in any of the movies, and none of the intense action scenes feel unnecessarily bloated or silly; there’s good ol’ mutant brawling only when there needs to be, and it’s all well done.

The movie as a whole just has everything you could ever want. The story is great, and it continues to show the interesting relationship between Magneto and Professor X, both past and future. Great characters like Beast, Mystique, and Kitty Pryde are given a chance to show a little bit more of what makes them so awesome, and best of all, the time travel element gives the writers a chance to tweak all the things that got messed up X-Men 3: The Last Stand. It’s the kind of movie that should please both comic book fans as well as people who have just seen the movies. It has great plot, awesome action, and great action. What more could you want out of an X-Men movie?

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About the Author

Matt Heckler is a writer, book critic, musician, movie nerd, sci-fi aficionado, and awesome beard haver from Chicago. When he isn't writing for The MindHut, he is drinking tasty beverages and working on his first novel. Follow him on Twitter @androiddreamer!